jacob_cannell comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong

23 Post author: multifoliaterose 19 August 2010 10:47PM

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Comment author: timtyler 01 October 2010 05:07:43PM 0 points [-]

This is interesting. I presume then that they believe that the software aspect of the problem is easy. Why do they believe this.

Because any software problem can become easy given enough hardware.

That would have been a pretty naive reply - since we know from public key crypto that it is relatively easy to make really difficult problems that require stupendous quantities of hardware to solve.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 01 October 2010 06:49:13PM 0 points [-]

Technically true - I should have said "tractable" or "these types of" rather than "any". That of course is what computational complexity is all about.

Comment author: timtyler 01 October 2010 07:23:33PM 0 points [-]

IMO, the biggest reason we have for thinking that the software will be fairly tractable, is that we have an existing working model which we could always just copy - if the worst came to the worst.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 01 October 2010 10:49:46PM 0 points [-]

Agreed, although it will be very difficult to copy it without understanding it in considerably more detail than we do at present. Copying without any understanding (whole brain scanning and emulation) is possible in theory, but the required engineering capability for that level of scanning technology seems pretty far into the future at the moment.